Thursday, November 5, 2009

Flashback or Backstory? What's the Difference?

A question came up the other day about Flashback and Backstory. Backstory, as you know, is considered a bad thing to include in a story—or at least in the opening pages—and yet many writers use flashbacks.  If you look at Where the Red Fern Grows, which is always a great example to use when talking about how to write a novel, the vast majority of the book is flashback. We, obviously, can’t be talking about the same thing with these two terms, but where do we draw the line and what’s the difference.

A Couple of Definitions

Before we talk about the differences, we need a couple of definitions. Some people define backstory as narrative interjected into a story that tells what happened before the current action. That definition makes it sound an awful lot like flashback. That isn’t very helpful for our purposes. I prefer the Merriam-Webster definitions:

backstory
a story that tells what led up to the main story or plot (as of a film)
flashback
interruption of chronological sequence (as in a film or literary work) by interjection of events of earlier occurrence; also : an instance of flashback

What They Are

Look at those definitions carefully. Backstory is another story that tells about things that happened before the current story. Flashback is an interruption in the chronological sequence. Unlike backstory, flashback is part of our current story. To say that any narrative telling of events before the current action is backstory is to assume that a story must be in the correct chronological order. Such is not the case.  Both have already occurred, but one is from another story and the other is part of our current story. What that means for us is that if we find ourselves reaching back into events that have nothing to do with our current story then it is backstory. But if what we are writing is still part of the current story but it happened previously then it is flashback. In terms of what we should and should not do, we should stick to one story and not try to tell more than one story at the same time.

An Example

Clear as mud? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Let’s look at a couple of examples. The first is of backstory:

When I woke on Saturday morning, I was starving and the refrigerator was bare. I hopped in the car and drove to the store. I had just gotten inside when I saw her, the lady of my dreams.

I started shopping at this store ten years ago. I had just moved to town and I didn't know where anything was, so I drove around town until I found a grocery store. I went in and liked it, so I've been shopping here ever since.

The lady smiled at me and quickly moved her cart out of the way, when I said hello. It was a sad sort of smile and I wondered what could possibly be behind that expression. We broke eye contact and we went on about our business.

The second is of flashback:

When I woke on Saturday morning, I was starving and the refrigerator was bare. I hopped in the car and drove to the store. I had just gotten inside when I saw her, the lady of my dreams.

The first time I saw her, it was also at this store. I was looking for coffee and she was looking for creamer, when I slammed my cart into hers. I apologized, of course, but I sometimes wonder if she'll ever thing of me as someone other than the guy who can't push a cart.

The lady smiled at me and quickly moved her cart out of the way, when I said hello. It was a sad sort of smile and I wondered what could possibly be behind that expression. We broke eye contact and we went on about our business.

Notice the difference in what the second paragraph does to this segment of a story. In the first example, we jump completely out of the story into a story that we could easily delete without doing any harm to the story. But in the second, the middle paragraph gives us more insight into this budding relationship between two characters. When even understand why she moved her cart out of the way.

Conclusion

Keep in mind that we have to scale the example up when talking about a novel. Instead of a paragraph of backstory or flashback, written in narrative form, we could be talking about chapters of backstory or flashback, written in extensive dialogue. But the principles are the same. Backstory tends to pull us out of a story into another and usually can as well as should be deleted. Flashback stays within the current story and is a way of telling the story out of chronological order. Because it is part of the story and an important piece of the story, it adds value to the story, giving us a better understanding of why the characters are doing what they are doing.